University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: Heels Empty Risers, Beat UConn
January 18, 2003 | Men's Basketball
Jan. 18, 2003
By Adam Lucas
Memo to the fire marshal: it takes about 15 minutes to fill the risers behind the basket at the end of the Smith Center court closest to the Carolina bench. There's some milling around, some jostling for position, some place-swapping to ensure optimum television exposure.
It takes, oh, about 3.4 seconds to empty them.
That's about how long it took the riser-standing students to spill out onto the court after Saturday night's 68-65 win over sixth-ranked Connecticut. You almost got the feeling they'd been waiting to do that ever since January 6, 2001, when Matt Doherty's first Carolina team beat Wake Forest in front of a frenzied crowd.
After that game, Doherty came into the postgame media room with blue paint on his dress shirt. Someone asked him what had happened. "I hugged one of the blue guys," he said, referring to the students whose bodies were painted completely blue.
There were no paint marks on his spotless ensemble after Saturday's game. No hugs with the blue guys. A lot has changed since that night over two years ago, but a big home win over a quality team still feels just as good.
Six top-25 teams had come into the Smith Center since that evening. All six left with wins. There was also the matter of a severe home drought over top nonconference teams. It had been, surprisingly, over 16 years since Carolina last beat a top-10 nonconference foe in Chapel Hill (a 90-77 win over Illinois in 1986) and it was way back in 1997 (a 50-42 win over Princeton) when Carolina last defeated a top-25 non-ACC opponent in the Smith Center.
So much has happened since then that has been well chronicled. Just this year, the Tar Heels have been on a roller coaster, bolting out to a 5-0 start and then splitting their next ten games.
But there have been signs in the past two weeks that this is a team finding its identity. Doherty got contributions from every member of his squad against the Huskies, including a great performance from the rapidly-improving Byron Sanders and two critical three-pointers from David Noel.
The impressive thing about this team is that players like Sanders and Noel are having a blast playing basketball. Noel, for example, didn't much care after the win that he dressed in solitude in a locker next to McCants while reporters thronged around the more-heralded freshman. That type of situation can cause problems on some teams. It doesn't matter on this one.
"I'm having a lot of fun," said Noel, who drew some confidence from a recent call to the basketball office from alum Kenny Smith, who encouraged the freshman from Durham to play like he had this summer, when Noel was the story of the summer pickup games. "At the beginning I was having fun, but I wasn't doing things I thought I could do. Now I'm having more fun than I could ever imagine playing college basketball."
When Noel and his teammates check their team DNA under the microscope, they're finding something that might surprise some people: they're beginning to take on the personality of their coach. The same coach who, when he noticed UConn coach Jim Calhoun getting a little quality time with the officials during one second-half timeout, walked down the court to see what was being said. Not inciting anything. Just checking in. And you got the feeling by Calhoun's quizzical expression that he doesn't have that happen to him too often.
This team has that same personality. It's a team that loves to take a punch just so they can get back up and deliver a haymaker. Coming out of a timeout with 1:13 left and Connecticut having just taken their first lead of the game on a beautiful fast break, it was easy to look for signs of giving up from this batch of Tar Heels.
They had played a good game, hung tough with a top team. Take the close loss and learn from it.
Only that's not what happened. Sophomore Jawad Williams--he's matured so much it's tempting to call him senior Jawad Williams--walked out of the team huddle pumping his fists. Raymond Felton motioned for his teammates to be calm. Rashad McCants looked like he had already seen the postgame highlights and knew the Tar Heels were going to pull out the win.
Do you remember when it was always like that? Do you remember when the man in the suit on the bench would gather his team around him when the momentum had swung to the other side and say, "Isn't this fun?"
That feeling is coming back, and you might have felt it if you were among the 21,750 sure-to-be-hoarse souls in the Smith Center Saturday night.
After the timeout, Jawad Williams made a cold-blooded jumper with 56.9 seconds left off a pass from Felton. It rated four "bigs" from Doherty. "When they took the lead, Raymond executed the play and hit Jawad for a big, big, big, big shot," Doherty said after the game.
After a UConn miss, Felton put on his best Bob Cousy demonstration as he ran the clock from 33 seconds to 3.3 seconds while avoiding Husky defenders who appeared confused as they watched the clock tick away.
"That surprised me," Felton said. "I thought they'd try to foul and put us on the free throw line. I just tried to run the clock off."
Eventually, it did run off, and with the final horn came a throng of win-hungry students. It took them about 3.4 seconds to claim the court. Speed is imperative when you've been waiting for two years.
Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly and can be reached at alucas@tarheelmonthly.com. To subscribe to Tar Heel Monthly, click here.
